don’t.” Or screaming “You’re sick!”
Some people I knew were like,
“This is stupid.” Others were terrified. I had to learn how to get these
posts taken down, the steps you
can take to reclaim your privacy.

Mostly, there’s nothing you can do.

The stress does weird things to
your body. I was exhausted every
day but never tired. I was on full
alert, full of adrenaline. It was very
intense. Then I’d go to the restaurant, and everything was normal.
I’d feel fear, but there’d be all these
families and kids happily eating. It
was like a parallel universe.

Later, Cecilia Kang, a reporter
for The New York Times, asked to
write a piece about what was
happening. At the time, I’d been
denying media requests. Once the
Times piece came out, it wasn’t
a dirty secret—everyone knew
about Pizzagate. Employees and I
talked every day about how to field
questions from customers.

The community really rallied
around us. Online, a movement
started—“We’ll all go to Comet at 6
p.m. Sunday to show our support!”
It was like, thanks, people, but can’t
you just come in several waves—
400 people showed up at once. The
managers were saying, “We are
going to be hugged to death!” From
that point on, every day was like
our busiest day of the year.

The gunman arrived on theafternoon of December 4. I wasn’tin. I was at a church fair when Igot the call from one of my manag-ers. She was crying and said, “Aguy came in with an assault rifle.”The man with the gun, EdgarWelch, had decided to “self-investigate” Comet. He rushed inthrough the front door and walkedtoward the back, and shot open theonly locked door in the restaurant,a closet, damaging computer sys-tems inside. My manager told meeveryone was safe and evacuatedto a firehouse across the street.

When I got there, the police hadlocked down the block. That night,we went back. It was so weird. Thetables were empty, but you couldsee full beers and half-eaten pizzaon the table—the moment whentime stopped.

At that point, I was ready to
close temporarily. The next day,
the phone never stopped ringing—
“When are you open? Are you open
tonight?” Basically, the community
said, “We’re coming. Open your
doors.” From Sunday until Tuesday
evening, I did everything I could to
get security in order. And we
opened. The way people came out
to support us, it was incredible, an
overwhelming sensation.

From that point on, though,I was fearful. I was still receivingdeath threats. I started wearing ahat and sunglasses to leave thehouse. And the security peopleIn the days just before thegunman drove to Comet, he wastexting with a friend and toldhim he’d been inspired by videosmade by Alex Jones, the onlineconspiracy theorist who runsInfowars. It’s one thing if rumorsswirl on 4chan or Reddit. ButJones has an audience of millions.He has influenced other gunmen.We’re still figuring out our legalstrategy, but we’re keeping ouroptions open. I was heartened tosee Jones retract his stories aboutus and apologize.

We continue to see protesters,
people who still believe Pizzagate
is real. On the day of the Women’s
March, the day after Trump’s inauguration, these guys came with
giant signs. They had megaphones
and were screaming, “Your neighborhood is Sodom and Gomorrah,
with your rainbow flags. And you’re
pedophiles.” They were yelling at
people going into the restaurant.

What happened next was
beautiful. People got up from their
seats and poured out onto the
street and rushed them, drowning
out their protests. We had a PA and
put on dance music, and everyone
started dancing around them. We
had a big dance party in front of
the restaurant until they got weary
and left. It was like, “Bring it on.”

Bai Brands founder Ben Weiss created
a low-calorie, low-sugar, antioxidant-rich
beverage based on co;eefruit–the bitter
pulp that surrounds co;ee beans and is
usually discarded. A;er launching from
his Princeton, New Jersey, basement,
Weiss spent years giving out samples,
and landed on the Inc. 500 in 2015. This
year, Dr Pepper Snapple Group bought Bai
for $1.7 billion. –As told to Will Yakowicz

If you get shelf space and think you’ve
made it, you’re mistaken. On the shelf,
you’re just inventory. The game is to get
o; the shelf and into the hands of the
consumer.

In 2010, we noticed that customers were
turning bottles to see how much sugar was
inside of them. You’d win or lose on that
basis, and I saw it coming—a growing
unwillingness in customers to drink sugar.
This is the issue that has fueled our growth.
We spent five years handing out samples,
telling customers about co;eefruit and
how Bai has only five calories and one
gram of sugar. It wasn’t glamorous, yet
it worked—no other beverage could make
the same claims.

The longer you’re in the beverage
industry, the more you realize you’re really
in the distribution industry. In 2014, we
signed a national distribution deal with Dr
Pepper Snapple Group. Sixteen months
later, DPSG made a $15 million investment.

I wanted to maximize the brand’s
potential—we couldn’t be just another
product on a company’s truck; we needed to
be a top priority. It was a tough decision, but
I initiated the process and told J. P. Morgan,
which had given us $50 million of financing
years earlier, that I wanted to change the
industry with a company embracing our
vision. Eventually, DPSG said that it wanted
to go where we were going, and to be
part of the solution: to help the industry
end its dependency on sugar and artificial
sweeteners. That’s the bedrock of our
relationship with DPSG.

Bai was early, but we were on to a
fundamental change. This is the first
year bottled water has surpassed soda in
sales. Ten years from now, the beverage
landscape is going to be very di;erent,
and Bai will be a big part of that change.
How low sugar took me to a sweet $1.7 billion sale
Ben Weiss | Bai Brands→ Beverages

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